Oliver Eade

Walls of Words

Short Stories

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

A collection of fifty-four short stories by a prize-winning novelist inspired by family connections and travels across the world. Some are set firmly in the real world: an elderly English spinster living with a grumpy sister reveals a long-kept secret when her American son gets in touch; a shy wife discovers she's more attractive than she had ever imagined when her husband's old friend turns up; a sexist professor learns the cruel truth on overhearing his latest 'conquest' talking to her friend in a cafe. Magic invades realism in 'The Red Chevy', when an old lady in a Texan care home relives her past until she escapes back into it. The writer's personal experience of an earthquake in China inspired 'The Old Grandmother' in which a grandfather and granddaughter make a pilgrimage up Tai Shan mountain to the Buddhist temple on the summit. In other stories, a Japanese man is married to a Manga girl whilst an Aborigine boy in Australia dreams of the legendary Red Kangaroo in 'Kangaroo Dreaming', a dream that foretells the end of White Man's world and a return to the old ways. There's gentle humour in 'The Hole', in which a hen-pecked Scottish Borders husband creates an underground retreat in his garden only to meet up with an ancient Celt doing the same to escape the invading Scots. In 'The Wave', a tribute to all who died in the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami, a wealthy Bangkok doctor returns to the beach where he used to meet up with his first love, a poor fisherman's daughter. An elderly woman questions why the walls in her nursing home whisper about death, and, in 'The Soul Sweeper', we learn what happens to the soul after death. A boy finds the ghost of Victorian girl under his bed in 'Pink Slippers', and in 'The Christmas Dance', a dying musician has his first-ever dance with the Angel of Death. In 'Frog Therapy Ltd', an infirm elderly couple learn that a potential cure also carries a risk of side-effects. In 'One Click Away', a man learns that computer problems extend to beyond the grave, and in 'Cissy', reincarnation links India with England. A notorious Italian jewel thief, who has inherited his mother's ability to transform into anything he chooses, gets comeuppance in one story. In another, a little girl meets a giant rabbit in an allegory about Man's greed destroying his planet. Orphaned tiger cubs kill a village girl to survive in 'The Two-legged Deer', and in 'A Baker's Novel', a dying man tries to re-write a tragic past in a novel. A man fighting for his life on an operating table, after a major head trauma,journeys, inside his head, to death in 'The Letter'. In 'C Sharp Minor', a young girl, aspiring to be a concert pianist, is in emotional turmoil after taking on the part of the teenage countess in a TV biopic about the doomed love affair between Beethoven and the girl for whom he wrote the Moonlight Sonata. One little boy wonders whether a sly fox that killed Old Annie's hens was really the devil; another, in 'The Tower of Truth', avoids a fairgound tower where his grandfather discovers pain, not pleasure, when promised 'the past, present and future.' A doctor discovers disturbing secrets about his family's past from his dementing aunt in one story. In another, an old Spaniard remembers the night his mother and village were wiped out by Franco's men. In 'Hawai'i', did the Polynesian Goddess of fire, Pele, really sit next to a tourist on an airplane? In another story, a classics professor is certain the flight attendant is Aphrodite. Although the stories span different genres, they share a common human

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Silver Quill Publishing
• Seitenzahl: 388
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Juni 2018
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 198mm x 129mm x 21mm
• Gewicht: 412g
• ISBN-13: 9781912513512
• ISBN-10: 191251351X
• Artikelnr.: 57768529

Autorenporträt

Oliver, a doctor, and seven times SOMW Creative Writing Competition winner, has written since 2005. SCPSW 2010 'Writer of the Year', many of his short stories won awards, some published as 'Walls of Words'. His debut children's novel, Moon Rabbit, described in the Sunday Express as: '...Perfect to be read aloud to children of all ages...' was a 2007 WAAYB New Novel Competition winner and long-listed for the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize.' The sequel, Monkey King's Revenge, was 2012 People's Book Prize finalist. His debut adult historical novel, A Single Petal, won the 2012 Local Legend Spiritual Writing Competition, and was reviewed in The Herald: '... Carefully researched, well plotted and more full-blooded than you might expect, A Single Petal's spiritual dimension is solidly grounded in traditional narrative rules.' His young adult novel, The Kelpie's Eyes, won the 2018 Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Award. He has now written four middle-grade novels, five young adult, including a trilogy. and three adult novels. Also a playwright, his take on Schrödinger's Cat, 'The Other Cat', won the 2018 Segora International One Act Play Competition. Sometimes he uses fantasy or magical realism as a story framework. Oliver is also interested in drama, has written twelve plays, of which three were short- or long-listed in open competition. In 2012, 'The Gap' another play, shortlisted in open competition, went on tour in Scotland. Oliver has held writing workshops in schools across the world.